Thursday, 12 November 2015 at 12:00 pm – Thursday, 12 November 2015 at 1:30 pm

PHOTOBOMB – A Dialogue

Presented by Jenna Brager and Adi Kuntsman

Date: Thursday 12th November 2015, 12.00pm- 1.30pm

Location: No 70 Oxford Street, Manchester, M1 5NH

Tickets: FREE – see Eventbrite for tickets

As mobile digital technology continues to spread around the globe, becoming easier and cheaper than ever for more and more people to access, so we have also seen a new saturation of images of the self. From the Oscars to the street corner, the rise and rise of the selfie has encompassed everyone from duck pouting reality stars to disgruntled First Ladies. But the selfie has also taken centre stage in areas of political turmoil, conflict and protest. Join us for two fascinating presentations that discuss what it means to be a ‘selfie citizen’, or even a member of a ‘selfie militia’.

Jenna Brager, “The Selfie and the Other: Reading Viral Images in the War on Terror”

In this talk, I enter into a conversation about the optics of violence and citizenship in the age of social media. Looking at selfies of terror victims and protestors, I think through questions of grievability and media framing in order to ask what happens when “third-world” selfies are consumed by Western social media audiences. I consider the selfie as a site of confrontation and context collapse, that engenders different modes of seeing. What are the political potentials, limits, and dangers of the selfie in online networks of attention? What do social media spectators do, when faced with an other?

Jenna Brager is a PhD candidate in Women’s & Gender Studies at Rutgers University in New Jersey. Her research focuses on the visual culture of remembering violence, and interrogates the concepts of justice, witnessing, and evidence in human rights discourse.

Adi Kuntsman, “Selfie militarism: war, social media and the everyday”

Continuing the topic of violence, citizenship and social media, I turn to the phenomenon of “selfie militarism” which I studied in the context of the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. Selfie militarism, on one hand, is about the use of mobile self-portraits by soldiers on and off the battlefield to beautify their military service and to conceal and normalise its violence. On the other hand, selfie militarism is about civilians who deploy the genre of selfie solidarity, to support their army, and call for more bloodshed and more militarised assaults, using a face and a personal voice of an ordinary citizen.

Adi Kuntsman is Lecturer in digital media at Manchester Metropolitan University. Adi is the author and editor of several books, most recent among them Digital Militarism with Rebecca L. Stein. Adi’s research focuses on violence, politics and digital cultures, and most recently, on selfie citizenship.

For more information, please contact:

Helen Darby · h.darby@mmu.ac.uk

Book Tickets

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